Category Archives: Plant Spirits

Post navigation

“Molly, what’s going on with you?” asked Owen, stepping into her office and firmly closing the door. “You seem distracted and vague. I’ve never heard you snap at your staff the way you have this morning. What’s up, Pal? You can’t hide your energy from a Medicine Circle mate who’s known you as long as I have.”

Molly glared at Owen. He’d come to drop off his recycling and check out the pile of trim wood that had appeared from an old beach cabin somebody’s crew was demolishing. Then he’d hung around, helping sort and stack other material that had just come in. She should have known he was picking up on something. “Umm. Errrr…”

“Come on. Out with it. Something is bothering you and it’s not just the usual. You go into focused overdrive when things here hassle you….” His voice trailed off as tears began to roll down her cheeks. Reaching out, he enfolded her short round body next to his heart. The floodgates opened and she sobbed from deep down in her belly.

It was a long time before she could get any words out. “My breasts…. Raphael Turner – the new doc – is worried…. I could see it in his face though he tried not to show it…. wants me to go get checked out by a surgeon…. but I can’t get an appointment for weeks…. It’ll probably be okay. But, Owen, what if it’s not??” Molly wailed.

Owen pulled away from her and looked into her eyes, now swollen and red from crying. “There’s a lot we can do right away. I’d say some serious healing sessions are in order no matter what is going on. You’ve known for a while, haven’t you?” She nodded guiltily. “Here’s a clean hankie. Just washed this morning. I’m thinking sweat lodge, a healer’s circle, and a little time off. Hmm? Do you want to write the emails or do you want me to?”

“Can’t we just do it without telling anybody?”

“We could but you know how powerfully the magic begins to work the instant you ask for help. You’re always saying that to other people,” he reminded her gently. “It’s different when it’s your own self, isn’t it.” She nodded again. “Let’s start by climbing the Mountain. When was the last time you did that?” He knew full well it had been ages. She hadn’t even shown up for the annual Scorpio birthday climb last week.

“Today?? But, but….”

“Gabe and the others are here. It’s a quiet off-season day. They can handle everything and you know it. Healing means changing your patterns. And I say playing hooky is a great way to start!”

Molly and Owen wound their way up the familiar trail. There were still a few yellowed leaves on the alder and cascara branches but most were down in soggy clumps at the sides of the trail. The spruce and hemlock overhead were dripping in plops now and then, though no rain was falling at the moment. Off in the distance a raven called.

“It really is good to be have finally told somebody,” she thought, huffing a little. She was in good shape from bicycling to work and her weekly sanity-keeping yoga class, not to mention running around at ReBound, but going uphill always added a new challenge. And she was still sorta overweight no matter how much she exercised. She wished she could be like folks she knew who climbed the Mountain every morning or at least once a week. “Stop it!” she told herself. Maybe chiding herself was something else she could change. She had her first glimmer of the positive possibilities of her situation.

They stopped at the first spot where they could look out over the long stretch of the spit between ocean and bay. The layers of mountains wandered off to the east and southeast. Below them, nestled in the dunes beyond a mile or so of scattered houses was ReBound. Her dump. “Actually sort of a scar in the dunes,” she thought wryly noting the metal pole buildings standing out starkly. Though clouds were hovering over most of the landscape below, a swath of sunlight glinted off the roof and the various piles were all too obvious to her, though a stranger probably wouldn’t have noticed the detail. Her mind began to stress about all that she wasn’t doing down there….

“Molly,” said Owen quietly. “Come back. We’re here on the Mountain. The wild ginger patch is just beyond the next bend and I have another more crusty friend I want to show you.”

Molly sighed and turned to follow him. “What am I going to do? If I’m sick…. even if I’m not sick…. Something tells me this is a turning point and I can’t keep on the way I have been.”

“It’s a very stressful job,” Owen agreed. “It’s made mincemeat of everyone else who works there and no one takes it home quite the way you do. I’ve felt for a while that you’ve been in denial about the toll it takes on you. What I keep getting is that Cancer often comes from the stress of needing to get out of something.” Owen spoke the C-word out loud for the first time. “Not everyone agrees with me but Uri and I have been talking about how it can be a guilt free way to ‘fly the coop.’ Like, ‘I’ve ‘caught’ this dread disease, I can’t do it – whatever ‘it’ is – anymore.’ I learned from Susan’s death that breast cancer seems to be from not taking care of yourself, nurturing everyone else first. Of course, there are environmental issues too. What about all the chemicals and shit you are exposed to all the time. I’m sure you guys handle various mystery hazards from once in a while.”

“Not often, but yeah, sometimes. And my brothers and I played in DDT when we were kids. We used to ride our bikes behind the truck when they sprayed for mosquitoes in the 50’s. And I don’t always eat very healthily.”

Her mind spiraled again but Owen, in tune, caught her again. “Try not to go into guilt about whatever you’ve done or not done. That’s not very constructive.”

They were quiet for a while moving over roots, little drainage gullies and animal holes, always upward. When they headed up along the section that turned north around the east side of the Mountain, the trees got taller and the understory more uniform in height. Owen paused at the base of a particularly large hemlock. The now leafless huckleberry and thimbleberry grew tall among the salal that never lost its leaves. Sticking out among them all right next to the path were some tall spikes with a few yellowed, particularly large leaves. Owen pointed his finger towards them and a special stillness settled over him that made Molly look at his face and then at the prickle studded stalks.

“Devil’s Club?” she asked.

“Devil’s Club,” he confirmed. “I’ve been watching some other patches a little higher up for the last couple of years but I only discovered these this fall when the leaves first fell off the thimbleberry. They’ve been disguised.”

“You’ve always been fascinated by the plant, haven’t you?” observed Molly. “But I never can remember what it’s for or quite understood what calls you about it.”

“Ryan Drum’s piece on it says he asked a native woman once and she said, ‘Everything,’ rather scornfully like he should have already known that. The books say it’s for diabetes and sugar issues. Powdered, it can even be used for a deodorant. I’ve yet to experiment with it. You know about the homeopathic Doctrine of Similars that says that there are hints to the healing properties of plants coded in their physical characteristics? I’ve been thinking about all the spines – which I understand can be really nasty – and I got ‘repels boarders’ like it keeps off infections or intrusions.”

“Kind of like my cat. You know how she is so prickly but has a lot of healing energy when she can relax and just let herself snuggle in.”

“Or maybe it is some kind of protection since I’ve also been getting that it has something to do with bringing us into our personal power. Getting us past the ways we protect ourselves (or think we are) and allowing us to move safely and courageously into the unknown of our destiny.”

“That would be cool,” said Molly. “Do you think it has something for me and this healing crisis I seem to be in?”

“I’d start by asking what you are taking on, burdening yourself with that you shouldn’t be. Who are the pirates that are stealing from you? What can you shed?”

“My first, obvious thought is ReBound and my responsibility for all that is there, but I immediately feel a lot of rebellion if this means being forced out of that. You mentioned that medicinally it has to do with food and sugars, certain aspects of digestion. The other thing I haven’t told anyone about is my stomach troubles…”

“Oh?”

“Well, my weight for one. Menopause has only increased my tendency to put on pounds and the treats people bring us at ReBound don’t help. I keep myself going a lot of the time with chocolate…”

“I can give you the essence I made the other day from the Devil’s Club root by the Grandmother Tree. I spent the night there recently and had an important journey, though I’ll be damned if I can remember the details.”

“Let’s keep walking,” she suggested.

After another turn in the trail Molly spoke back over her shoulder to her friend, “It keeps going through my mind that Seth didn’t get well – you worked with him too….”

Owen looked both pained and resigned. “I’ve never spoken about this but it’s my sense that he was caught here in a mire he could neither change nor adapt to…. and maybe he had something more important to do from the other side of the veil. You remember, don’t you, his spirit coming to you during the Hallowed Days? Do you think his injunction to do more art might be a healing clue?”

“Hmmm,” said Molly. “There might be a connection there….”

Nearing the top they had to crawl carefully up on the tricky path and as she crept from stone to stone, Molly thought about how like life this was. Upward, yet carefully, feeling one’s way one rock at a time – with tired, maybe even shakey legs, yet full of determination to get to the Pinnacle where their community spread out below them. Yet, they could only stay there for a little while. At some point they’d have to go down again into the fray…..

At the risk of sounding like the classic “would you like to see my etchings,” would you like to come up on Tuesday about 5 pm for a drink and to choose a painting for our trade?

From: Owen@ nekelew.net

To: Thea@ nekelew.net

Subject: Re: Your paintings

Good timing. Tuesday would be great and I’ve cleared a space on my wall for a painting.

“Welcome, Owen. What can I get you? I have wine, beer, gin…and tequila.”

“Actually, I don’t drink anymore. Friend of Bill Wilson’s, you know. I’d love some juice if you have any.”

“Oh. I have apple juice if you’d like. Either plain or sparkling.”

“Sparkling would be lovely.”

If Thea was disconcerted by Owen’s choice she didn’t show it, pouring herself a glass of Merlot after she handed Owen his Martinelli’s. Standing in the kitchen alcove, they made small talk about the craftsmanship of the trim little house. Its previous owner was connected with Owen’s parents and it had been built by Charley with wood from Owen’s family’s sustainable timber operation.

But soon Owen’s eye was drawn to look around at the paintings. “Have you done all this work since you came down here?”

“Nope. That one there is an older one. It’s the Green Seed painting that Ursula and I were talking about when she suggested I come to you for a Soul Retrieval.”

“And this one?”

“That’s a new one about the Mountain – or rather a Wild Woman in the Mountain. I think her name needs capital letters. Have you ever heard of a legend about such a one?”

“I think there are stories of her in the collection called Nekelew Tales, but nothing substantive is coming to mind about her. I wonder if she has any connection to Durga that Ursula was just telling us about the other night or Kali. They are serious wild ones from India.”

“She came to me strongly and I just assumed she was Native American. In fact, the Mountain almost seems to be talking to me. Does that sound really weird?”

“It is weird – in the sense of ‘witchy’ – but I know what you mean. For me it comes through the plants. Which reminds me.” Owen dug through his knapsack and pulled out a small brown bottle. “Comfrey flower essence as ‘prescribed’ by Dr. Ursula and made by yours truly. It’s also known as bone knit so symbolically it’s about putting the pieces – the members – back together. Either literally if you have a broken bone or figuratively such as your lost parts we retrieved.”

“Is that why she said ‘remembering?’ I’ve been wondering about that.”

“Yes, as in re-membering,” Owen separated the two parts of the word as he spoke it.

“But what is an essence as opposed to a tincture?”

“A tincture contains the biological components of the plant. I make those too but these are the subtle energies. I can also make essences from crystals or even the energies of events. They’re more like homeopathic remedies that are diluted so much there’s nothing left of the original substance but the signature energy. I know it’s counter-intuitive, but the more they’re diluted the stronger they are. I make these from Mountain spring water in a crystal vase with the flower or root – usually in both sunlight and moonlight and often created during a special celestial or earth event such as an eclipse, solstice, or full moon. Or a new moon. They contain alcohol as a preservative so I don’t use them myself except when they are fresh – or from the freezer.

“Because they are Spirit Medicine they operate on a subtle level of one’s being. Always they come from a being – a plant, a place, a stone – that wanted to give its gift to us humans. I listen to the meaning & character of each gift as told to me by the being itself.”

“Exactly. It could very well help with those processes you are in the midst of. If you did have a cold, it would tackle the deeper basis for why you ‘caught’ it. Often unexpressed grief is involved and it could be very ancient. Or say if you had a sprained ankle or broken limb, it might help heal whatever it was that caused the so-called ‘accident’ in the first place. Why did you lose your footing or what is ungrounded in you? But you started to tell me about the Mountain talking to you.”

“Do your plant spirits come to you in their creature spirit form or in people-like form with distinct personalities like Eliot Cowan describes?”

“They are very amorphous for me. I just get a sort of feeling about them. It’s very subtle and easy to miss if I’m not listening carefully. And I often did miss it in the early days before I learned what was happening…”

“When I was painting the other day…. I’m not sure I’m ready to have you spread this around.”

“I won’t breathe a word until you’re ready.”

“As I finished this Wild Woman painting I heard a voice – no, it would be more accurate to say that I saw a voice in my head. I’m such a visual person that’s the only way I can describe it. A voice that said…well, see this fire in the painting here? I don’t know why that came in but it really wanted to be there…. The voice told me it’s a beacon calling me – us? – here…. And that the dragon is protection…. and something about Wild Woman…. I’m not sure what. That’s why I was asking about her.”

“Cool! We’ve often talked in the Medicine Circles about people feeling called here and occasionally the word “beacon” even gets used. Plus it’s not unusual for folks here to see flickers of dragons out of the corners of their eyes as well as in dreams. Or even just turning up a lot in books and cards at propitious moments. It’s a potent symbol. I’d say you are tuning into the deeper levels of what’s here. Good going. It’ll be fun to see what else you come up with.”

“I don’t know whether to be relieved or more worried that you seem to think I’m tuning into something others are also getting.”

“Well, I, for one, would welcome accurate, beautiful depictions of what many of us suspect about this place and its purpose. And it wouldn’t surprise me for you to channel images that give us new information too.”

“ Should I say ‘thank you?’”

Owen laughed. “Did you ever have experiences like this when you were a kid?” he queried.

“Nooo. At least I don’t think so.”

“I’m wondering if it is your psychic self that has been closed off, shut down the way it was in so many of us. Often we had experiences as a child – some can recall them and some can’t – where a grown-up made us feel ashamed or crazy or fearful which, in effect, muzzled us. I know one person who knew her little brother had died before they told her and another for whom it was a grandparent. In one case the story was accepted and the person retained that ability. The other got yelled at for it and clammed up. She’s still working to regain her belief in the credulity of her other worldly experiences.”

“So you think I might have had such experiences and just not remembered?”

“It’s certainly possible. I hear a lot of fear in you about it.”

“Years ago a friend talked me into going with her to a psychic. It was amazing. He saw me as an artist and said I should be showing my work more. He had a lot of specifics about how I should go about doing that. Because of him I went on what now feels like a tangent visiting galleries back east – trying to hit the Big Time, you know.”

“Pretty alluring.”

“He also gave some directives to my friend that got her pretty bollixed up – about leaving her husband and some other stuff.”

“Sounds like by getting so specific, he wasn’t being too ethical. June says one always needs to leave room for free will in the person one is ‘seeing’ for. i.e. making it clear that there are many possible roads and turnings. Choices one gets to make rather than one inevitable path laid out in concrete.”

“Still, in a way it was a good thing. I was so turned off by the push energy of the tangent that something in me began to rebel against what I call ‘Capital A’ Art. It was about that time that I also began to discover Tarot and the Goddess and that led me down here…. So it wasn’t all bad by any means. But the thought of channeling something ‘wrong’ or ‘too much’ for somebody freaks me out.”

“Is it that, more than the fact of it happening to you or people knowing that it’s happening to you?”

“Certainly I don’t want to be considered crazy and all that. I think my mom planted some of that in my head. Hey – I wonder if she’d had some experiences she wasn’t telling me about. Or my aunt…. the one who left me the money that made it possible for me to move down here to the beach.”

“Any of them might have, of course. It certainly hasn’t been accepted in our culture for a long time. As we talked about with Ursula the other day, they burned witches….”

“Well, come on upstairs to my studio and some more of the paintings.” Ready to change the subject, Thea led Owen up the narrow, beautifully built staircase to her studio area. He had to duck under the low hanging eaves where the stairs turned and then opened out into a wide clear space full of canvases stacked every which way, as well as paintings and clippings hung on every possible surface, even the tall file cabinet next to the cluttered work table.

“Oh ho! What’s this one over here?” Owen pointed to a painting that was hanging on the east wall. “It’s really calling to me.” A large green male figure was holding an armload of plants and flowers. Foxglove and daisies stuck out from his arms while nasturtiums and ivy dangled down. A crown of what looked like Oregon Grape circled his head, though it could have been holly. Sitka spruce stood tall all around him, pointing up to the stars of the constellation Orion sparkling in the sky. A tiny figure of a centaur was wheeling near the stars. Thea had used her signature phthalo green and white to give the painting an eerie, other-worldly feeling.

“That’s the Green Man – I painted him this summer when I first got here and before I had any idea of the European archetype.”

“That’s funny because that image has become really important to me recently. It gives me chills to see it here. It’s like there’s some memory I can’t quite get hold of that has to do with it….” His voice trailed off.

“When you say that it gives me chills too….”

“To get chills is a sign of psychic connection,” Owen said absently. “The plants…?”

“You had just introduced me to Oregon Grape so it felt appropriate to put it in.”

“So it is Oregon Grape… Clearly this is the painting I want in trade for our session. It will be good to live with it and ponder why I’m responding so strongly to it.”

“I have no idea who the centaur is or why he’s in the painting.”

“I don’t know either, but that’s part of the mystery of it for me.”

“I probably shouldn’t say this, but I find him really sexy,” said Thea. She wasn’t about to admit any more about it out loud. She’d exposed herself enough already to Owen, but she was feeling the energy of Osiris on him. Osiris, Egyptian God of the Underworld, was often considered a Green Man as well. Could it be Owen who had been turning up disguised as such in her fantasies lately?

There was a bit of an awkward silence. “Umm,” said Owen. “The plants are indeed the expression of the lifeblood of the earth and they can certainly stir us up. What is more primal than the Pan image of the Green Man? Yours isn’t leering here or goat footed though that’s often how he’s depicted. The Christians made him into the Devil. The Seducer. The Satyr, half man half goat, definitely has a mixed reputation in our culture.” Owen knew he was babbling but he didn’t know where to go with this.

Thea laughed. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. But doing this painting made me feel sexy and now you’re taking it home so that has to become part of the mystery of it. Hopefully it will be disturbing in a good way.” She moved to take the canvas down from the wall and handed it to Owen with a flourish, bowing as he reached to take it. Owen bowed low in return.

“Owen, I’m pretty sure that at least some of this New Age LOVE energy is about sex. And the playful cougar seems to be coming out in me, thanks to you.“

Thea walked along the beach a week or so after her Soul Retrieval. The clouds were hanging low and the wind a bit brisk, but it probably wouldn’t rain ‘til evening. As she walked she imagined Little Girl Thea beside her, one mittened hand in hers. Mittens? No, that’s what a mother would put on her. Or a responsible big sister. Thea realized the hand in hers was now bare and, in fact, the little girl only wore a petticoat like Thea had loved at that age. As she became aware of this, the hand tugged. “I want to go play in the waves.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Thea laughed out loud, “Of course you do! You can do anything you want.”

“Anything?” the little sprite asked.

“Anything! You can’t get cold and you can’t drown either!”

The little girl spun away from her across the sand to the waves with her cougar bounding Tigger-like beside her. A rush of joy made Thea giddy. It was as if she herself had just breathed in a freedom that brought with it a whole new set of possibilities.

In the next moment a gull swooped down into Thea’s peripheral vision, bringing her to a standstill. Stunned, she realized it was as if she was actually inside a painting done last year before moving down here. A scene that had come through her paintbrush was happening now.

She remembered struggling to settle down to the assignment from her group to paint her True Self. A preliminary Tarot spread told her to let go of her head, her ego, her rational side. “Not an unusual message for me that year. Or still,“ she thought with chagrin. She had smudged, lit candles, and prayed to the Goddess as was her practice to help with that letting go process before picking up a brush.

She started in with a red swoosh which became part of a multi-colored stormy spiral. Then into her mind had come the image from a photo she’d had on her wall since college: reaching ecstatically towards the sky, a little girl twirled almost out of control, ocean waves behind her. A gull had gone into her painting high above the child.

“I realized how Gull was my uplifting omen bird most of my childhood,” Thea thought now, purposely capitalizing the ‘G’ in her mind’s eye. “As Hawk was for my city years and Owl is these days. And I remember suddenly knowing with utter clarity that a crone needed to go in on the right – a crone in all her magnificent glory. My beloved white grandmother, yet also the me I am becoming – part of the identity I am reaching for.”

Thea remembered wanting to give her a paintbrush. But knowing this powerful figure was so much more than her artist self, she had instead painted in an orange cloak with purple swirls on it. “Whenever I look at it now I feel like the crone is guiding the girl toward the adventures of the huge spiral tunnel that looms, though she could also be welcoming her back into a loving, safe embrace. Occasionally in my most fearful moments I worry that she is warning her away…. from being a witch.”

Thea brought herself back into the present with a shiver, the hair standing up on the back of her neck. Here she was with the not-quite-real little girl who was her lost soul self dancing towards the waves with the gull swooping and herself waving the child on, saying, “go for it!” Indeed this was just the way the painting had given her permission to move forward at the time it was done. Wow!

She wasn’t wearing her orange ruana today though she really did have one. It wouldn’t have been warm enough on this windy beach. But she knew she was in the proverbial cloak of power that shimmered around her more and more these days.

“I’ve got to tell Ursula,” she thought pulling out her cell phone. I’m close to town and she might be at the store.”

Ursula grinned at Owen as Thea burst in the door of Bear Essentials about twenty minutes after her excited phone call.

“The paintings are coming alive!” She described what just happened.

“Sounds like the soul retrieval is working some magic,” said Owen. “Good job staying in touch with your little child.”

“I’ve seen that painting on your website,” Ursula said. “It’s very beautiful.”

“At the time I recognized it as powerful and important, but it was frightening as well. The spiraling tunnel seemed scary – like I was going into my fallopian tubes (which there is a painting about as well.) I knew that was the journey to learn what I needed to absorb. Plus the figures insisted on being white! Like my Mom’s ancestors coming through me. But more frightening still was the idea of a spiritual “coming out” to my family and community. It was not okay with them for me to be into all this weird stuff. Whatever intuition…. ummm…. sensitivity I was allowed in my growing up was carefully guarded. I had to keep secret even from myself my belief in fairies, my belief in goodness, my belief in God. I can look back now and see the signs, the footprints, but it was not safe to acknowledge them in the 1950’s. I shielded myself well….”

“Yes,” said Ursula. “I think we all locked that away in a cocoon unless we were in the rare home like June’s where her mother taught her about seeing auras, setting intentions and shielding, among other things. She’s way ahead of us on that score.”

“So now my shields are coming down,” Thea continued. “The layers of protective skin are peeling back. There’s the snake again,” she smiled at Owen and he grinned back acknowledging another connection to her Soul Retrieval. “The process is sometimes joyful and sometimes painful…. That painting sure set off reverberations. I’ve been reeling ever since with the implications. My painting group at the time could only sort of get it.”

Owen and Ursula exchanged a glance. “You’re doin’ the work.” And “We’ve all been telling you that we can see your power shining through.”

“But nobody seems to realize the effort it takes or the lack of safety I feel…. or how hard it was to get myself to this new life.”

“Don’t you think we’ve been there?” Owen said as he lovingly handled a particularly beautiful rose quartz that he’d always admired.

“Or had similar fears?” added Ursula. “This is a tiny community. It was very, very scary to begin to realize where our explorations were heading. We practically had code words to see who else understood.”

“But you have this shop and everything.”

“And it was terrifying to take that step. The first yoga teacher got hate calls back in the 70’s. Remember, Owen, our first pagan green float in the 4th of July parade that got booed? There are still people who look at me kind of sideways in the hardware store.”

“Now you’re acting as a gateway for a lot of people, Ursula,” observed Owen. “I’ve noticed that both tourists and newcomers like Thea get connected up through the portal of this store.”

“Yes, Ursula, it was partly this store that made me choose Mahonia to move to,” said Thea. She flashed on the voice she’d heard as she finished the Mountain painting, but decided to hold her tongue for now about that.

Ursula was speaking, “Christiane Northrup talks in Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom about our visceral inherited fear of the Burning Times. I believe her. I remember. Years ago some friends poo-pooed this notion but I had such a strong feeling that it was more important than any but weirdoes like Shirley MacLaine professed. And since then I’ve had a bunch of past life memories come through during body work, as well as dreams that have confirmed it to my mind at least.”

“Is that the limb I’m out on? It would certainly explain the demons and scary images that keep appearing in my paintings and my dreams,” said Thea.

“You betcha. A lot of people definitely think we’re weird.” said Owen.

“Did you know that ‘weird’ means ‘witchy’?“ interjected Ursula.

“Oh. My. Gosh. Really?”

“Have you ever seen the videos done by the Canadian Broadcasting System about the Burning Times? I have them and often show them this time of year with a sharing session afterwards. It’s a good way to connect back into that history and the haunting reasons for our fears. Some people just cry and cry when they see them.”

“I think maybe I’d rather watch them by myself,” said Thea.

“That works too. But keep this in mind: when I was wrastling with my own version of those shadows, I was assured by Spirit that we are not going to be killed this time. We are here in this life and in this place to cleanse those old fears and write new stories. We’ve come together to re-member the old skills and magicks.”

There was a silence for a beat or two.

“That was spoken pretty powerfully, Ms. Bear. You sounded like an oracle,” said Owen handing her some cash for the crystal he couldn’t seem to put down.

“Owen, you old greenwitch you, when are you going to bring me some more of the flower and crystal essences you promised? I think Thea could use a little of Comfrey’s synthesizing, re-membering energy. I’ll trade you for that hunk of heart energy you’ve got there.”